E. F. Benson

“ Now, any one that was human would know that that is just about the only thing in the world worth doing. Personally, I consider it an instance of the wonderful self-abandonment and self-sacrificing character of love."
"And she wouldn't even call it love," said Arthur.
"No; she would use some perfectly antiquated and shocking word. Now, whatever I am, I am not antique. It is absurd to treat me as if I was Old Testament history. But Marie is a great dear. She has been too sweet about the bazaar, and has promised to hold a stall every day." ”

“ Marie sat down again. The passion for analysis, of which Jim Spencer had accused her, was strong in her. She was intensely interested.
"Let me understand," she said. "You are originally in love with me; then you fall in love with Mildred; then you fall in love with me again. Is that it? We take turns. Were there others? You have gratified your whims; why may not I gratify my curiosity?"
Jack did not reply for a moment. Then, "I never fell in love with her," he said. "But a man is a man."
"And a woman only a woman," said Marie. ”

“ It was an idiotic footman, who thought I was engaged, and did not tell me you were here. How are you, Mildred?"
Mildred sat down. Her dress rustled incredulously.
"Driven," she said—"simply driven! How foolish one is to make a hundred engagements a day, and not enjoy any because one is always thinking about the next!"
"Yes, very foolish," said Lady Ardingly, "especially when one does not enjoy them. Now tell me the news, dear Mildred. I do not go out and I see nobody. You are always everywhere. I never saw a woman who sat in the mainspring so much. Tell me all about everybody." ”

“ Jim laughed.
"Well, if I am as bad as you think, it would clearly be a dangerously stupid thing to show it to an enemy."
"Ah! you would sooner lose a friend than give a handle to an enemy," said Marie. "I entirely disagree with that. I would choose to make or keep one friend, even at the risk of arming a whole regiment of enemies against myself. Enemies matter so little."
"Certainly friends matter more," said Jim, "and perhaps acquaintances less than either. The worst of having been away from London so long is that one finds so many of the latter and so few of either of the others!" ”

“ Perhaps your absurd conduct, Jack; perhaps the thunderstorm which is certainly coming; perhaps reaction from my anger. Perhaps that I have got my way: I have started a scandal about Marie—got it successfully launched. I have the sickness of success. Oh, decidedly the only way to be happy is to want things, not to get them."
"Want, then; it is easy enough."
"I am beginning to wonder whether it is," said she. "I rather think that the faculty of wanting is a faculty which belongs to youth. Dear me! I am getting philosophical, and I beg your pardon. ”

“ What is the use of trying to start a scandal which nobody will believe? It was so stale, too. You and I certainly had done our level best to believe it long before, Lady Devereux. That Sunday down at Windsor—don't you remember?"
"Yes, I tried for a week, with both hands and my eyes shut," said Blanche.
"And I tried with my eyes open," said Arthur; "so we have given ourselves every chance. It, too, had every chance. It was launched without a hitch, and the colours waved madly on the winds of heaven. Silly Billy, the 'Deuce of Spades,' the overhearing of it by Jack! All brilliant accessories! ”

“ Oh, the truth is this, Jack—I am glad, yes, glad, that I am not going to pretend to be friends with Marie much longer. There are many good women who apparently do not mind hypocrisy, but there are many women who have no pretension whatever to be good who do not like being hypocrites. I am one. I shall not go to heaven when I die in any case, but I assure you that if I could by promising to talk about Sunday-schools to the saints I would refuse it. ”

“ London on the one hand; on the other, being in disgrace. For the sight of the hot square garden, she had here this cool, green lawn; for the riband of dull wood pavement up Grosvenor Street, the silver line of the Thames; for the companionship of languid and heated mankind, the eager dogs; and for the hopeless tedium of a ball, the cool vast night pouring in through the open windows of the drawing-room. ”

“ To this side lay the lawn; the croquet hoops were up, and leaning against the stick was a mallet; four balls in as uninteresting position lay immobilized here and there, the débris of a game, red versus blue, which Maud had begun that morning, but had found her honesty or her interest unable to cope with. Beyond was the house, bandaged as to the windows with green sun-blinds, and empty but for Maud's maid, who was in love with the caretaker, who adored the kitchenmaid-cook, who adored nobody. ”

“ If you had said she was having an intrigue, say, with the Emperor of Russia, it would have hurt nobody, not even the Emperor. Never mind, dear, the thing is done. We must consider how we can make the best of it. A scandal is always a dangerous thing to touch. If one denies it afterwards, if even the inventor, who believes it to be true—how ridiculous, too, of you, dear Mildred!—denies it, there will always be people who think that the denial merely confirms it. ”

“ Royalty was there in a quiet little broughamish kind of way, and everything, in fact, went just exactly as it should, and when Mildred stole quietly away to avoid a string quartette and talk to Lady Maxwell, both to congratulate her on her husband's honour and advocate the virtues of patience and perseverance for Anthony, she felt braced and invigorated for the duties that lay before her. She had already wound the clock up, and it pleased her to think that its ticking would soon be audible all over London. For herself, she did not care the slightest how loudly people talked about her. ”

“ Brereton drew on her gloves.
"There is something very successful in your attitude, Marie," she said. "You go about hurling home-truths at people; you hold up looking-glasses to them, and make them see themselves; you point out what brutes they are, and scold them for it; but they never bear you any ill-will, and always want to see you. You really must not go into the country: we cannot get on without you!" ”

“ I heard, in fact, dear Mildred, that you, driving to that concert the other day, put the notion into Silly Billy's head."
"I don't know who can have told you that," she replied.
"Silly Billy did. Oh, I grant you that that is no guarantee at all for its truth. I never see any reason to believe what Silly Billy says. But you must now reckon with the story as it stands—as it reached me, in fact: namely, that you told him the story which he very indiscreetly repeated in Jack's hearing. You who know the world so well know that people will not care if it is true. ”

“ The lights were still brilliant on the lawn, and as they passed behind the screen of bushes Arthur Naseby's voice was still shrill. Marie found herself noticing and remembering details with the most accurate observation; it was here, at this bend in the path, that there would be a smell of syringa, and a little further on a dim scent of roses. Close to the house a cedar cast a curious pattern of shade; a square of bright light fell on the gravel path from the open drawing-room windows. ”

“ So Box and Cox had their hearts' desire, and flew down the road inside the Park parallel to Park Lane. Here a motor-car, performing in a gusty and throbbing manner, was a shock to their sense of decency, and they made a simultaneous dash for the railings, until recalled to their own sense of decency by a vivid cut across their close-shaven backs and a steady pull on their mouths to show them that the whip was punitive, not suggestive of faster progress. The progress, indeed, was fast enough to satisfy even Mildred, who, however, was enjoying herself immensely. ”

“ Why must a man of that kind do that when Guardina is sure to be here? There, I told you so! what a row there will be! She has the temper of a fiend, like me. Jack, if you ever flirt with another woman on the sly, and I see you, there'll be the deuce to pay. Come and tell me frankly if you are going to do that sort of thing. Dear Madame Guardina, how are you? Do walk a little way with us. No, there's not a soul here this morning, is there? I've seen no one, not even the most constant habitués like Pagani. ”

“ Her dinner finished, she lay down again, and in a few minutes was fast asleep.
She woke feeling immensely refreshed, her headache already insignificant, and with a strong desire for the cool, fresh air of the night. Her room, baked all day by the sun, was very hot, and the sight of the dim shrubberies outside, and beyond them the misty moonlit field that bordered the Thames, tempted her to go out. She had already told her maid not to sit up, and, turning up her electric light, saw that it was nearly midnight, and that she must have slept close on three hours. ”

“ We are vicious; we are idle. No one has any dignity or any manners, and there is no object under the sun, except perhaps the avoidance of physical pain, for which we would sacrifice our breakfast or dinner."
"There is no one under the sun," said Mildred, "for whom many of us would not sacrifice our reputations."
"But not our dinner. Oh, I know I am only really speaking of—well, of people you and I know best, among whom we choose to pass our time. There again you see our utter want of originality. We are bound hand and foot by conventions of our own making. ”

“ But even as she drew these comforting conclusions, she had leisure to observe that Jim, too, was in the grip of some inward struggle. Its nature she did not try to guess, but continued talking under a sense of stress, a fear of silences.
"You know my gospel, do you not?" she said, "or, rather, I am sure you do not, as I have only formulated it to myself during this last day or two. There are two halves to the world, which make the whole, and each is the antidote to the other. One half is people; the other half is things. Now, the country is the place of things, and London of people. ”

“ Look at your father now, Maud; he has perhaps less pretentions to good looks than any one I ever saw. But what a happy, what a blessed"—and the word did not stick—"marriage ours has been! Looking back even now, I have never yet seen a man whom I would sooner have chosen. And long, long ago—a year ago at least—I thought that if only dear Anthony would be attracted by you, what a happy thing it would be. It is silly to expect high romance. High romance does not exist for ninety-nine hundredths of the world—luckily, I am sure. ”

“ We live in an age, my dear Jack, in which violence has altogether ceased, and law, which is meant to take its place, defeats its own object. However successful your defence of both your action and of your wife's honour may be, surely you know that, if such a thing is made public at all, every one instantly says that there must have been something in it. ”

“ I remained in sublime inactivity, except when other people used me for their own base ends. I never felt so useful in my life."
"But that, again, is no use," said Arthur—"like the consciousness of innocence which Lady Devereux means to cultivate. Being simply an opportunity for other people seems to me the very type of a wasted life. I am continually being an opportunity for other people, and the opportunity I give them is to make unkind remarks about me; they constantly take advantage of it."
"What do they say?" asked Marie. ”

“ Jack had no pertinent reply for a moment; then, "I do not know that the censorious attitude suits you very well," he said.
"Ah, the whole question turns on what one is censorious of. I am censorious of your hypocrisy, reasonably I think, because I have no weakness that way. But you as censor of Marie's morals! Oh, does it not make you laugh, simply for fear you should cry? Have more whisky, Jack; you really are not yourself yet. ”

“ I point out to you that the cost is a heavy one."
"But if I did—if I did," said Marie, her voice quavering, "would it stop Maud's marriage, for instance?"
"Mrs. Maxwell—Lady Maxwell, I beg her pardon—would assuredly forbid the banns."
"But Anthony is of age," said Marie. "He would marry her."
"He could not. Even if he did, she would be the daughter of the divorced woman."
"But I can't help myself," cried Marie. "I could not go on living with Jack."
"You prefer to sacrifice innocent and guilty to sacrificing yourself," said Lady Ardingly. "My dear, we live in the world. ”

“ Dear Andrew! he always remembers my birthday, while I always strive to forget it. One has so many. But he gave me these pearls. Are they not pretty? Yes, Jack, you are booming. You are in the air!"
"That is always rather a nuisance," remarked Jack. "One can't help wanting to assure people that a close inspection will not repay them."
"I don't think you need mind much. People are disposed to take a favourable view of you. You must manage to keep it up. The time of pigs and shorthorns is here," she said with a sigh. "Look: there is Silly Billy talking to Marie! ”